


The Merit Of All Things

by Cunien



Category: Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, The Musketeers (2014), d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble Collection, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ficlet Collection, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Trigger Warning: Miscarriage, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:46:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1470358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cunien/pseuds/Cunien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of shorter fics, quick drabbles and ficlets, each inspired by a song on my Musketeers playlist. Ranging from angsty to fluffy to humour, whatever comes out comes out. Title from the Dumas quote: <em>“The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.” </em></p><p>Chapter 1 -  Kings Of The Wild Frontier - Treville surveys his troops.<br/>Chapter 2 - Dark Doo Wop - Milady contemplates staying with Athos as the house burns around them.<br/>Chapter 3 - Beeswing - The first and only year of Athos' marriage.<br/>Chapter 4 - Chick Habit - Porthos tries - and fails - to stop Aramis from doing what Aramis does best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kings Of The Wild Frontier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _God preserve me from those four, Treville thinks. He feels a headache begin to twitch at his temples._
> 
>  
> 
> Treville surveys his men on parade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> _**Kings of the Wild Frontier - Adam & The Ants **  
> A new royal family / A wild nobility / We are the family_  
> 

The Cardinal’s Red Guard have their helmets, the slashed red and black doublets and cloaks. They have a uniform that is recognisable to the people of Paris, even if it is only as a warning to move in the opposite direction, since it’s common knowledge that the Cardinal’s men are little better than the criminals they profess to guard the populace against.

The Musketeers…..well. They have their blue cloaks when they have a mind to wear them, and their pauldrons of course, though of all different shape and design and size - (Treville had picked up Porthos’s one morning, when the big Musketeer had left it off for a moment to ease out an injured shoulder during sparring. It was big enough for Treville to use as a breastplate, should he have need).

The Captain of the Musketeers sighs and squints at his men, lined up on the parade ground for the King’s inspection. They stand opposite the Red Guards as they do on this morning every year, but Treville thinks once more that he really _must_ speak to the Cardinal about this arrangement: the unspoken rule being that both regiments must attempt to provoke and gall the other in a myriad of inventive and subtle ways. The array of snarled and curled lips on display at any one moment is fairly impressive, though, Treville thinks with a sense of pride, his men are largely stony-faced, staring into the middle distance with only the narrowing of eyes or the odd twitch of a mouth as evidence of emotion.

There will be some fairly significant brawling in the streets of Paris, tonight.

He catches a slight movement from the corner of his eye, a Red Guard making a subtle yet incredibly rude gesture that - if Treville’s knowledge of current street slang is correct - is meant to signify a slur against a man’s mother and...something about a donkey, perhaps? Porthos, standing opposite, stares fixedly at a point just to the side and up from the man’s left ear. His moustache twitches, ever so slightly. Next to him stands Aramis, and Treville knows from his grim smile (as momentary as it is) that he is even now memorising that man’s face.

Athos is nearby, of course. He can see the slightly damp strands of hair clinging about the man’s temple, the way his face is just a shade too grey, his hands trembling slightly. Athos is one of the best men in the regiment, and though it’s not saying much, one of the most sensible of the bunch. Even so it’s evident he’d attempted to consume his own body-weight in wine again last night. Something cold and hard settles in Treville’s belly, and he sighs inwardly. That man will ruin himself, given half a chance, he thinks.

There’s a gust of breath, sudden and harsh from the ranks of Musketeers. Treville finds the source, a red-faced d’Artagnan. As close as they’re all standing to each other the captain can just make out the press of Athos’s hand, holding back the younger man.

God preserve me from those four, Treville thinks. He feels a headache begin to twitch at his temples.

Richelieu stands beside him, his gaze imperious across his troops, surveying the lines of polished cabasset helmets, the dull gleam of black and red leather with a cool air of pride. He flicks a glance at the ranks of Musketeers and smiles, just slightly at their captain. 

At least _he_ doesn’t have _The Inseparables_ to worry about, Treville thinks.

He takes a steadying breath and reminds himself once more why the Musketeers have no uniform: there is something undeniably sensible about being able to blend into the crowd, to slip off a pauldron or cover a shoulder with a cloak and become invisible, one of the people. His Musketeers can go where they want - even, if they’re careful (or Porthos is with them), into the Court of Miracles. They can wait in the shadows of taverns, stand in the lee of a doorway on a rainy night, watching and listening.

The Cardinal’s men use their uniform to force respect from the people through fear - the Musketeers _earn_ it through their deeds, through honour. But as much as the Red Guards may use their uniform as an excuse to indulge their brutalistic nature, Treville shudders to think what they would be without it: wolves in sheeps clothing. At least the people know when a man is a Red Guard, know who they should fear. Without the threat that their deeds might reach the ears of the Cardinal his men would be animals, left off the leash, free to act as they please with anonymity and no fear of punishment.

The Musketeers are a blade, thin and subtle, where the Red Guards are a cudgel in the hands of a brute. The Cardinal’s men need a uniform to foster a sense of brotherhood, since they’d as likely turn on each other as anything else. His Musketeers? Well, they’re overburdened with brotherhood - the lengths they’ll go to for each other is both a point of pride and eternal anxiety for their captain.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Athos sway, just slightly, and this time it’s Porthos and d’Artagnan’s turn to splay their hands to the side, holding him up as subtly as possible. On closer inspection it looks like the young Gascon might have the beginnings of a black eye, Porthos is in definite need of a shave, and there’s a dark stain on Aramis’s hat that looks rather as though it might be blood, feathers drooping a little.

Treville sighs, and this time it’s loud enough for the Cardinal to hear. Yes, he wouldn’t swap one of his worst men for twenty of Richelieu’s. He just can’t help wishing they would turn up for parade just once looking like soldiers, instead of rakes and reprobates.


	2. Dark Doo Wop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She could just stay here. Stay wrapped around him, stay with her love and her hate because what is she without them? She could stay as the fires burns the awful mess of it away, burns it away to nothing._
> 
>  
> 
> Milady find Athos as the house they once lived in burns around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> __  
> **Dark Doo Wop - MSMR**  
>  _If we’re gonna die, bury us alive_  
>  If they’re searching for us, they’ll find us side by side  
> That’s my, that’s my man

The flames lick higher against the crackled dryness of a house long dead. She doesn’t think about dappled morning sunlight through bed-curtains, how he’d covered every surface with forget-me-nots for her, thrown wide the doors and let the living green and blue of them inside.

He did this. _He_ started this fire.

She hadn’t known he was there in the house, that’s the truth of it. Five years of vengeance and hatred, drip by drip until there was an ocean of it inside her, so vast and unforgiving she’s afraid she might drown in it with him. She’s watched him from a distance since the Cardinal brought her to Paris, and she’s gone to sleep with his name on her tongue every night since first they met. _In sickness and in health,_ she thinks, _I was faithful in that at least, my love._

But standing here, in front of him, looking into his eyes for the first time since he left her at the end of a rope, is...something else. Something she could not have anticipated.

He turns to her, and he’s a drunken broken shell of a man, but suddenly she is eighteen and it’s the first time again. It feels like looking into the sun. She tries to note the red of his eyes, the way his hands shake, the unsteadiness of him, tries to catalogue it all as evidence of a vengeance that he has wrought on her behalf, but it doesn’t feel like winning.

Her life has always been filled with darkness, her earliest memories marked with the rhythm of a hatred as comforting as a heartbeat echoing her own. But for a brief spell, a year living the life of another woman, a pale blue year of happiness, a year he’d made her destroy. 

_He_ made her throw open the doors and let the darkness in, truly, until it consumed her. _He_ made her do it.

She wonders if the hatred will die with him.

He fits in her arms like he always used to, and the love and hate is enough to crack her wide open. She knows now it will never die with him, will never lie quiet until she herself is in the grave. 

She could just stay here. Stay wrapped around him, stay with her love and her hate because what is she without them? She could stay as the fires burns the awful mess of it away, burns it away to nothing.

She could just stay.

_“Athos!”_

The name pierces through the pall of pale blue smoke in her mind. Someone else is here, in their house, and the thought is enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end because it has to be the two of them alone, it has to end how it began.

She straightens, letting Athos drop to the floor, letting him lie there at the end he brought on himself.

He won’t ruin her again. This time, she’ll live.


	3. Beeswing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her, with her dress the forget-me-not blue of the first spring morning, her eyes green and cool like the shade under a stand of beech trees. And he knows it, knows it from the first moment he looks into those eyes: the Comte de la Fere is utterly lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> _  
> **Beeswing - Richard Thompson**  
> _
> 
>  
> 
> _Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing_  
>  So fine a breath of wind might blow her away  
> She was a lost child, oh she was running wild  
> She said “As long as there’s no price on love, I’ll stay,  
> And you wouldn’t want me any other way. __  
> 

**Spring**  
Athos sees her, and something begins to bloom in him, something spring-green and delicate as an unfurling leaf. He feels, finally, alive. 

There’s nothing to stand in his way: no parents, no one that he cares for but Thomas, his brother. What are the whisperings behind hands and closed doors to him? He has Thomas, he has her - the rest of the world can hang for all he cares, and there's something like freedom in the thought.

When Athos sees her, the blue of her dress is startling, like the only point of colour in a world that has been grey and pallid since the day he first opened his eyes. Inclined to silence, inclined to the duty borne of nobility, Athos has spent twenty-five years living the life he was supposed to. The eldest son, it was his place to be grim and noble, his brother's to be gay and light-hearted. But for once, for once Athos will have something for himself.

It feels like riding as fast as he can only for the rush of the wind and the push of air into his lungs, it feels like saying yes instead of always no, and it feels like letting go. God, it feels like letting go - letting it all slough away from him and just _be_ , in her arms.

Her, with her dress the forget-me-not blue of the first spring morning, her eyes green and cool like the shade under a stand of a beech trees. And he knows it, knows it from the first moment he looks into those eyes: the Comte de la Fere is utterly lost. 

 

 **Summer**  
Athos buys her the house with its long beech-lined driveway, the shock of blue forget-me-nots outside the shuttered doors. She says she'll press some for him, but the flowers will come again next spring, it's not them he wants to keep next to his heart forever - it's the day she first sets eyes on their new home, the bright burst of happiness in his heart, trickling out through limbs into goose-bumped flesh beneath her fingers.

Beneath her lips he comes alive, beneath her hands and her heart he is the man he has only been a shadow of, until now. She understands something that he has carried in him all his life, his need to be _seen_ , utterly and truly. 

They shut themselves inside as the days lengthen into summer, duties neglected, no world outside their house and their love and the circle of their arms. And then one heat-prickled August day, they lie in the tickling tall grass as she draws their woven fingers to rest atop the small swell of her belly, the crinkled summer blue of her dress. She smiles, slow and steady, and for the first time in his life Athos cries.

 

 **Autumn**  
The heat of summer breaks like a fever into the last gold of autumn, and there's something in it that gives Athos pause, like a wrong note in a melody. He wonders later, if he could have felt some foreshadowing of what was to come. Everywhere is tight and bursting, the unseemly desperation of harvest, the last push before the cold end of the year.

It's on the last day of September that he finds her on the floor, the stain blooming wet and dark on her dress. He holds her as she shudders and heaves, the blood prickling dry on their hands, but he cannot cry then, and he thinks later that the hate she bore him might have begun right there.

It's not that Athos doesn't feel the loss - it's like a blow somewhere deep and vital and utterly raw. He pushes a bottle across the table at Thomas as they sit in silence and pretend they cannot hear Anne scream upstairs. After a while the doctor comes down, talks to him, but all Athos can hear is that his wife almost followed their child into the grave. Almost, but not quite. He lets his fingers ghost across the pallid softness of her furrowed brow as she sleeps, wants to hold her so tight that nothing could hurt her ever again, is surprised by the fierceness of his love for her. 

Thomas tries to talk to him but Athos cannot find the words, anymore. He doesn't notice the look in his brother's eyes, the light of something that might be relief there. The distance is lengthening between them like a void that's become too wide to bridge, but Anne is all the world to him. He grasps the locket she'd given him, the links of the chain pressing tight against the palm of his hand. 

The forget-me-nots she'd pressed are brittle and paper-thin now, but there will be next spring, Athos thinks. There will be forget-me-nots again.

 

 **Winter**  
Athos feels his wife begin to draw away from him, but still he thinks he can pull her back, that he might be able to thaw the fine etched lines of hoarfrost he can feel creeping across the skin beneath his fingers, the heart beneath her skin. He loves her so very much, after all.

It’s the end of a long and cold winter, the days beginning to lighten and ease into the promise of spring. Thomas spends more time with them, but still Athos notices nothing. Later he will remember thinking that his brother did not laugh as much as he used to anymore - but he does not speak of it. He gives Thomas no room to confide, to give voice to the suspicions that hide in the corners of his mouth, in the tight set lines of his brow. 

Athos loves her so very much, after all.

 

 **Spring**  
There’s shock in the coolness of her eyes for a moment, a fear that flickers there before she blinks it away like an irritance. The knife is in her hand, the blood is seeping from Thomas like a halo. There is no question of denial.

Athos wonders what his wife would have done had he not returned unexpectedly, stumbled upon her moments after she had cut his brother’s throat. Smashed a window perhaps, bruised her fair skin, a play act to blame another for the murder on her hands.

The first forget-me-nots spring up, and she holds them in her hands as she stands beneath the tree, the noose, the weight of his gaze. He reminds himself she killed their love along with his brother, killed the life they’d made together, but finds he cannot feel much of anything, anymore.

Athos has lived for a year. He has loved fiercely, so hard that it tore his heart to pieces. And it was delicate, as the blush of light through his closed eyelids, as the fine veined wing of a bee, as an unfurling leaf. It was never meant to last.


	4. Chick Habit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Leaving you alone at a ball is like letting a small child run wild in a pastry shop,” Porthos states, unamused._
> 
> _“I just can’t help myself,” Aramis agrees with a sigh. “Such pretty pastries.”_
> 
>    
> Porthos tries, and fails, to prevent Aramis from doing what Aramis does best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  __  
>  **Chick Habit - April March**   
>  _Hang up the chick habit , Hang it up daddy-o,_   
>  _You’ll never get another fix, I’m telling you it’s not a trick,_   
>  _Pay attention don’t be thick, Or you’re liable to get licked._
> 
> _You’re gonna need a heap of glue,_   
>  _When they all catch up with you_   
>  _And they cut you up in two_   
> 

“Did he see your pauldron?” Porthos asks, leaning on his knees and feeling his lungs contract painfully in his chest. “Aramis, did he see you were a Musketeer?”

Aramis pushes himself off the wall that he’s been leaning against, trying to catch his breath. He casts about a bit, as though re-imagining the scenario they’d just fled, the key players, where they stood, what they may or may not have seen, what they almost certainly did see.

“No,” he says, “I was standing….” he turns, “...like this. Left side facing him, he can’t have seen. I think.”

Aramis smiles then, and that’s what does it: that little smirk, the quirk of the eyebrows, the _I’m too charming for you to be angry with me_ look he thinks works so well.

The little _oof_ of surprise Aramis makes when he punches him is almost enough to soothe the hot tide of Porthos’ rising anger. Almost.

*  
 _Earlier_

Treville squints up at the Musketeer silhouetted in the doorway, sure that he must have misheard the request.

“I’m sorry, you’re _asking_ to be on duty this evening? At the fete? You do realise it’ll be five hours of…” he stops before he says something that, as the Captain-lieutenant of the King’s Musketeers, he really shouldn’t.

Porthos squares his shoulders and looks at a spot approximately 10 inches to the left and up from Treville’s ear, an old soldier trick that the Captain knows only too well.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he says, narrowing his eyes.

Porthos is silent for a moment, and Treville would almost feel guilty: the big Musketeer is almost incapable of lying to him, Treville knows this. It’s touching, really, knowing as he does that it’s due to the respect the man feels for him. It’s only unfortunate that certain individuals put Porthos in this position so frequently…

 _Ah_ , Treville thinks, _there it is_.

The Musketeer stood in front of his desk swallows and says, with some reluctance, “Aramis is on duty tonight, sir.”

The urge to roll his eyes is so overpowering that Treville thinks it’s a good thing Porthos won’t look at him, since the cross-eyed expression he undoubtedly wears is somewhat less than dignified.

“Of course,” Treville says, going back to his papers with a sigh, and then, with rather more of a hint of sarcasm, “You _shall_ go to the ball, Porthos.”

The Musketeer snorts. “Thankyou, sir.”

Before he shuts the door, Treville calls after him without even looking up, “Oh and Porthos, I’d like it understood that I hold you entirely responsible for failing to prevent whatever catastrophe will undoubtedly unfold tonight.”

“Understood, sir,” Porthos says, and then, with a hint of the cheek he seems to have adopted from entirely bad company, “Only if I can request it be noted I went to my death doing my duty, against insurmountable odds.”

“Deal. Now get out.”

*

Porthos thinks, that if he were anywhere else, with anyone else, and wearing anything else the evening might even be a pretty one: the sky is that bruised dusky colour of a summer evening, the stars beginning to ease themselves out above the treetops.

He runs a finger around the neck of his breastplate and heaves a sigh. Treville had conveniently forgotten to mention that the Musketeers on duty at the fete would be required to wear ceremonial uniform. They all forgot about the uniform, given half the chance. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the Red Guard’s ceremonial gear, with all those ruffles and ribbons - it was even halfway to practical. But comfortable? Not so much. 

Since they were only required to wear it once in a blue moon, most self-respecting Musketeers had pawned the key piece of the uniform, the breastplate, for wine or women, or in Porthos’s case, food. 

Which meant, whenever a blue moon occurred, a half-hearted scrabble around the garrison for one-size-fits-all spares. Of course, Porthos wasn’t exactly the size they had in mind when they (whoever _they_ were) dictated the one size in question.

“Stop fiddling,” Aramis chides, without even looking. “You’re acting like a child in his sunday best.”

“I _feel_ like I’m wearing a child’s sunday best. This breastplate wouldn’t fit a bloody ten year old.”

“Stop exaggerating. You’ve only yourself to blame for being so _big_.” 

A small knot of ladies nearby titter into their hands, and Porthos can feel the tips of his ears burn red. Aramis offers them a charming grin in return.

“Perhaps you could swap with him,” he says after a while, flicking his head across the lawn to a where a group of dignitaries stand chatting idly. The fete is a fancy dress ball, and the dignitary in question has come dressed as a roman centurion, despite the fact that he’s barely five foot and appears to be wearing the armour of a much bigger man. “There’s room for two more in _that_ breastplate.” 

“Can’t believe I volunteered for this,” Porthos mutters to himself.

“And why _did_ you, again?”

“Leaving you alone at a ball is like letting a small child run wild in a pastry shop,” Porthos states, unamused.

“I just can’t help myself,” Aramis agrees with a sigh. “Such pretty pastries.”

The women burst into a fit of giggles again, and Porthos closes his eyes to ease the headache brewing at his temples.

*

Aramis can’t have been out of his sight for more than five minutes, really, but it’s astonishing how quickly that man can get himself into deep water and happily go about drowning himself, Porthos muses.

He rounds a corner of a high trimmed hedge and thinks, yes, they look like they’d be a bit short of breath right now: the woman flushes prettily, one of Aramis’s hands at the neat line of her corseted waist, the other cupping tenderly at her jaw. Hers are tangled firmly in his hair, which explains the delay in moving apart when an outraged shout comes from somewhere out of Porthos’ sight.

The bastard manages a cocky little sweep of his hat before turning and running - for a moment Porthos thinks Aramis might actually stand and fight, but while he can’t see the offended party from the sounds of it the cuckolded husband has a few friends with him. It wouldn’t do to challenge so many of the King’s favourites at such a public event, whilst on duty, Porthos supposes.

It can’t be more than the blink of an eye, but the thoughts parade through Porthos’ mind at speed: Treville will have their heads for this, there’s no doubt. Maybe they can persuade him it wasn’t a _Musketeer_ that was seen with the lady, just some nobleman in a similar breastplate and hat? Maybe?

Aramis clatters past him, interrupting his thoughts and flinging an arm out to tug Porthos along.

“Best run, friend” he puffs, “The Comte doesn’t look very happy.”

“ _Comte?!_ ” Porthos hisses. “Are you mad or just a fool?!”

“A fool for _love_ ,” Aramis calls over his shoulder, cheerfully.

*

Porthos succeeds in knocking him off his feet, so that’s something. Aramis has the good sense to stay down, easing his legs out and sitting down on the hard dry earth. They’re somewhere in the maze of hedges and trees at the distant end of the Luxembourg Gardens, far enough from the torchlights and music to be safe from furious husbands, for a while at least.

Aramis pokes tentatively at the bloom of red and purple beginning to ease its way across the skin around his left eye. “I suppose I deserved that,” he says carefully, “But must you hit quite so hard?”

“Yes,” Porthos huffs, “Might succeed in knockin’ some sense into you, one of these days.”

“Doubtful,” Aramis says.

“You’re going to get us all killed, you know that? You, me, Athos, even Treville.”

Aramis shakes his head, “Treville would find a way out of it. Athos too. You and I? Probably not.”  
“But you do it anyway.” Porthos tugs at the straps on his too-tight breastplate, and flops down next to the other man.

“I do.”

They’re silent for a moment, all ticking muscles and breath only now easing out. 

“I love them all, you know,” Aramis says after a while, and there’s something new in his voice, something quiet and true, something that strikes somewhere deep in Porthos’ chest. 

It’s been a year and a half since Aramis came back from that forest in Savoy - Porthos knows the scar on his temple still twinges sometimes, sees him worrying at it with fingertips when he thinks no one is looking. They’ve come to realise that their friend won’t ever be quite the same again, but any moment of lightness is a win where Porthos is concerned, coming as it does after many, many months of darkness so impenetrable it’s a wonder any man could find his way through, even one such as Aramis.

Porthos wants to say something, but he’s not sure what. He wants to say he doesn’t understand because he can’t understand, how someone could still love after what Aramis has seen. He wants to tell him that Aramis scares him sometimes but never as much as those first few days after Savoy, and that anything, _anything_ , is better than that.

“I know, Aramis,” Porthos says, looking at his feet, because it’s all he really can say, in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Treville is actually the Captain-Lieutenant of the Musketeers, King Louis is official Captain of the regiment, according to Dumas. I've mentioned it once but then referred to Treville as Captain thereafter, makes it a bit simpler.
> 
> I also liked the idea that the Musketeers had to wear a breastplate similar to Treville's for official functions. Can't be on duty at a ball looking all scruffy now, can we?


End file.
